Architects from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, who found their way to the Pacific Ocean in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s as emigres or exiles, exercised a powerful influence on the development of a specifically Californian modernist architecture. The symposium “Building Paradise: Exile Architecture in California” brings together leading architects and scholars from Europe and the United States to examine how the work of such luminaries as Rudolf Schindler, Richard Neutra, Albert Frey, Julius R. Davidson; and later Konrad Wachsmann and Erich Mendelsohn responded to the climatic, political and cultural conditions of California.